European Court of Human Rights Rules on UK Privacy Law

By Dan Cooper on May 10, 2011

The European Court of Human Rights has today issued its long-awaited ruling in the case of Mosley v. the United Kingdom.

Max Mosley, a UK national and former president of the International Automobile Federation (the governing body of Formula One) lodged an application with the ECHR in 2008 after leading national UK newspapers published details of Mosley’s private life without notifying Mosley before publication of the details. Mosley argued that the absence of a UK law requiring newspapers to notify individuals before publishing details of their private lives (i.e. a pre-publication notification requirement) denied individuals the chance to seek pre-emptive injunctions to stop publication, and so was a breach of Mosley’s Article 8 right to protection of private and family life.

The ECHR today rejected this argument, noting that in the UK the right to private life was already “protected with a number of measures”, including self-regulation of the press, a civil right to damages in court proceedings for wronged individuals, and a right to apply for an injunction where an imminent publication was known to the individual and judged necessary by UK courts. The ECHR also noted that the proposed pre-publication notification requirement could act as a ‘chilling effect’ on the freedom of the press to publish, including under their own Article 10 rights to publish in the public interest, and concluded that the absence of a pre-publication notification requirement in the UK did not breach Mosley’s rights under Article 8.